


What Makes a Fake Heart

by Cyber_Kainer



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Sanfransokyo, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21878251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyber_Kainer/pseuds/Cyber_Kainer
Summary: Dark Riku takes on his assignment in the world of Sanfransokyo. Without something to bind his will to so he can stay determined, he finds himself lashing out at the world around him. Will Sanfransokyo fall to darkness before Big Hero 6 can stop him?
Relationships: N/A but there might be some in future chapters I haven’t decided yet
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. Festering Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know how to use AO3 I’m new here, please tell me if I’m doing something wrong. Also the way of writing between first or third or whatever person it is, switching how it does, I realize that probably doesn’t make sense so I might change it later, but I’m keeping it in for now for emotional impact (??), let me know if it’s as jarring as I think it is?

Being ripped out of the ether, gasping for air as you’re suddenly brought to life… Looking around at all the expectant faces. Confusion. Fear. Where are you?

Suddenly memories come flooding, too fast, too fast, you can’t think! An island? Kids? Keyblades… Your name is Riku.

But you’re not Riku.

You’re nothing more than a copy. A fake. That’s the first thing they tell you. You’re surrounded. You don’t understand.

A fake…? What does that mean?

Dark Riku’s eyes shoot open as an alarm clock blares. He has to resist the urge to destroy it since he’s the one who set it himself. He sets it a little earlier each morning, hoping to wake up before he has time to dream.

He pushes himself up to a sitting position and grabs the clock. He rubs his eyes with one hand and fumbles with the alarm with the other, managing to get the damn thing to shut up. As his eyes adjust, he makes out details of the room he’s been staying in. His vision traces across the foot of the bed, across the window, out to the empty walls. He had a room with the organization that was a little less baren, but when he got assigned to this world, the very first thing he did was harass Vexen to help him get some forged documents and set himself up an apartment to stay in. He was sure the only reason he agreed was to get the replica out of his hair… He always looked at Dark Riku with this odd expression, like he wasn’t comfortable with him around.

The damned doctor shouldn’t have made him, then.

He let out a sigh and shook the thought from his head. He put the alarm clock back on the night stand and opened the drawer underneath it. He pulled out its only contents - a red floppy disk with a crudely drawn skull on it.

The way he saw it, this floppy disk was sort of like him. Just a bunch of data, information, another person’s memories saved to an external device. The original Riku probably didn’t know much about computers, but Dark Riku had studied as much as he could about them - both because he didn’t have much else to do in his time off and out of frustration of his own creation - so he was able to tinker with that machine he found out in the void on his own. This disk, however… He didn’t use hardware to tinker with it.

He opened his hand, allowing the disk to float up, coated in a dark fog. He poked and prodded it with the power of darkness. He thought he could feel a heart in it before, but when he found the start of one forming inside, he had to flinch back at first. Now that he’s gotten used to it, he pokes at it often, every morning.

It makes him sad.

A heart was created and put in this disk, and for what? To fight, it looked like. Just like him. And then it was discarded… Just like he would be…

He can’t do anything about his own fate, but he knew for sure… He would find the person who made this heart. He would make them hurt.

Dark Riku stood up and put the disk in his pocket. He had no idea how he’d find the person who made the disk, but he may as well start by doing his assigned task. Flooding the world with heartless felt strangely mundane to him, but if nothing else, he could tell them to report back to him if they found another machine like the one he left in the void.

He made his way out of the apartment. He wasn’t going to start the spread anywhere near where he was staying. Maybe that would keep anyone from finding him, but more than that… It was hard enough ignoring the thought of all these people he was staying so close to suffering at his hands.

He passed by a flower shop, glancing at the cashier through the window for just a moment before heading up to the cross walk. It was strange. He could remember when Riku didn’t have any qualms with hurting people. He was even given the memories of another Riku, who had gone so far as to hurt their best friend… No, Riku’s best friend.

But they were fighting for a purpose. Dark Riku stared up at the light, waiting for it to let him walk. He wondered if he would be happier if they gave him someone to pretend to care about. Sora… Kairi… Naminé… If he felt anything for them, it was resentment for how they’d allowed the other Rikus to be manipulated. As the light changed, and he made his way to the bus stop, he thought maybe it was better this way… They couldn’t twist his mind like they had the other two Rikus. He at least knew that he had no worth. No one was waiting for him to rescue them. No one could be let down when he failed.

If Dark Riku had any purpose, it was to spread his own hurt onto others. He wanted Riku to hurt most of all. He dug his nails into the seat of the bus stop as the first replica’s memories came to him. The idea that if he hurt Riku enough, if he got rid of him, he could be the real Riku.

He wasn’t crying. His arms shook and his eyes burned, but he wasn’t crying. He should be laughing, he thought. The first replica was so stupid. Become the real thing?

As the bus pulled up, Dark Riku gripped the bus seat tight enough to leave imprints of the wood in his hands. He took a deep breath to steady himself and pushed off of it, making his way onto the bus.

Becoming the real Riku… What would even be the point? It was obvious he was a fake, it’s not like he had any home to return to if he tried to leave the organization. He was all alone.

His gaze crossed with strangers as he made his way to an empty seat. He didn’t recognize most of them. The ones he did recognize, as being from the apartment or working at a nearby shop, he’d wait for them to get off. He hated that he felt weak enough to have compassion for those people. But the others…

Hatred. Hatred, just the same as he felt for Riku and his friends. These people were “real”. They didn’t have to do anything to be who they are, they were just allowed to “be”. The darkness pulsed in his chest, yearning to lash out. He wanted to make them hurt. This feeling was understandable. It was comfortable.

He hated the way the ones he recognized made him feel. He waited as each of them got off at various stops. When he first arrived in this world, some had greeted him, asked him if he was new in town, told him about places he should go check out. They really thought he was just another person, someone who dressed a little funny that would become another part of their little community. They were welcoming. It made his chest ache, made him want to run away.

When the last one got off and the bus was filled only with complete strangers, Dark Riku felt relief, but also… Sadness?

Why had the organization given him a heart? Surely they just needed another lackey, but couldn’t they have done something that would have left him heartless? Some of them were nobodies… Like that girl, why couldn’t they have made him like her? She was as lifeless as he wanted to feel.

Dark Riku tried to steady his breathing, tried to push the thoughts out. In just a few more minutes, he’d get to take all this out on the bus passengers, anyway. He could take solace in knowing how good it’d feel to make someone _else_ hurt for a change.

The bus stopped in a traffic jam on a long, red bridge. He took a breath. This would be good enough. He’d start here.

Most people ignored him when he stood up, though he did get one or two glances. Nobody paid him mind once the screaming started, however. With a snap of his fingers, the long stretch of road was thrown into chaos, with no one having any way to escape the sudden flood of heartless, short of throwing themselves into a watery grave.

Dark Riku teleported to the top of one of the red towers to get a better view. He let out a small chuckle as his chest panged. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling, but he didn’t think it mattered much. The screams filled the air and drowned out any thoughts that tried to worm their way into his mind.

Pure madness.


	2. Replacements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Among the chaos and dismay of his attack on the town, Dark Riku finds what‘s left of the person he’d wanted to hurt. The aftermath, however, leaves him feeling weak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features inaccurate descriptions of the heartless from this world because truth be told I just didn’t feel like looking up the proper names.
> 
> It also has mentions of suicidal thoughts.

It was glorious.

Screams rang out, reverberating inside the replica’s artificial chest like the speakers of a cramped night club. It was dizzying and left no room for precious few thoughts. The heartless covered the streets in a wave of chaos and rapture, rendering civilians from their limbs, clawing through their flesh to tear out cristaline hearts that floated out towards the sky like shimmering dandelion seeds on the breeze.

Dark Riku took a sharp breath in, letting the normalcy of the sight soothe him as he exhaled. Suffering. Sweet, sweet suffering of people so insignificant, they were little more than ants beneath his boot. They scuttled along, trying desperately to free themselves from the onslaught of death and dismay, but where could they go? Many tried to climb over the vehicles, others pulling them down in their own attempts at escape, but it didn’t matter. Those that fell were gutted by Shadows, those that made it up were whisked away by Wyverns. There was no hope for these feeble plebeians.

That is, until an armored crusader dropped in. Dark Riku peered down at the intruder. It’s red metal body glinted, a bright shiny new version of that piece of scrap he found out in the void.

It had been… replaced. Completely remade. Dark Riku hissed as his heart burned. Of course it had been remade. Obviously! With shaky hands, he thumbed the disk in his pocket, letting a surge of darkness flow into it. “Looks like they don’t even miss you, huh?” The faint start of a heart flickered inside it. Dark Riku knew it was in pain, although he also knew that pain alone wouldn’t let it grow into a full heart. If that’s all it took, he’d have finished it by now.

His eyes flicked a little higher as he saw a glint of purple. There was a smaller machine attached to its back? He decided to take a closer look.

Baymax sent a small cluster of heartless flying with a rocket punch, then used his free hand to grab another one to sling into one of the flying heartless. Hiro was looking around frantically, trying to piece a plan together in his head. “What even are these things? Monsters? Nothing fazes them, they just keep coming!”

Hiro yelled when a Soldier suddenly grabbed him and pulled him off of Baymax. He brought his hands together and manipulated the magnetic pull in his gloves to shove it off, but more jumped on him instantly.

Baymax turned to try and help him, but Shadows grabbed his feet. He let out a simple “Oh no.” as he fell over and began to be swarmed by heartless as well.

The heartless scratched at Hiro’s armor, trying to dig in deep to take out his heart. He flailed, trying desperately to knock them off, but their claws dug between the joints and started to pry off the outer layer of metal. Just when Hiro thought it was all over for him, a flash of black appeared, and the monsters vanished, glimmering hearts flying away in their absence. Before he could process what had happened, a strange blade was thrust into his face.

“Woah, watch it!” He yelped. The white haired stranger above him raised a brow.

“You don’t sound like what I expected a robot to sound like.” Dark Riku said flatly.

“I’m not a robot!” Hiro shoved the blade out from in front of him, and the replica could clearly see that yes, his face looked much different from the robot’s. His eyes were bright and determined. The way he glared at Dark Riku… it reminded him of Sora.

Dark Riku squinted then flicked the blade in Baymax’s direction. “What’s your relation to the big guy?”

“That’s not really any of your business.” Hiro scoffed. He jumped when the blade came down, nearly cutting into his shoulder. He looked up sheepishly and shrugged. “Wellll, maybe it’s a little bit of your business. I sorta built him.”

“Do you think I’m stupid? You’re a kid.”

Hiro rolled his eyes. “Uh, yeah, a kid genius. Anyway, I didn’t say I designed him, I just used his blueprints to-“

The blade jerked down, causing Hiro to flinch back to avoid getting cut. “Where’s the guy who ‘designed’ him, then?”

“He…” The determination wavered in the boy’s eyes. He clenched his fist, but forced himself to remain in eye contact with the stranger. “He’s not… around anymore.”

Dark Riku felt like the wind was knocked out of him. “You mean he’s… dead?” The boy nodded solemnly. He could be lying, but… The replica somehow doubted it. His heart sank. If he wasn’t able to make the creator hurt for abandoning it, then… He felt all the motivation drain from his body. He pushed up and pulled the blade from the concrete. He supposed he didn’t need the original creator around. He could probably use this kid to finish creating the heart, but he wasn’t much in the mood for kicking people around anymore. “I’m... Sorry to hear that.” His heart panged. He wasn’t sure why he’d said that. Well, he was disappointed, but he had no reason to feel sorry for this kid.

He probably did need the boy alive, though. He gave a quick slash, eliminating most of the surrounding heartless. “You’re no match for these things. Get to safety while you can.” He then turned and threw open a portal.

“Wait!” Hiro scrambled to his feet to try and follow suit, but the portal vanished just before he could jump through.

Dark Riku lied on his bed with an arm draped over his eyes. He felt completely drained, but the light from the window made it impossible to sleep. He felt like absolute shit, and if he had the energy to get up, he might be tempted to just let himself fall out of the window. Not that anything would really happen… He knew this by now.

These moods used to bother him, used to scare him, but knowing how trite it all was in the end, it just left him feeling drained of any energy. He felt as if he could fall into a coma right then and there.

He rubbed the disk in his pocket, trailing the smooth edges of the plastic. A heart that can be rebuilt… placed into a new body, an existence continued over and over again. Duplicable, replicable, able to be tossed around like cheap candy. Able to be used by anyone who can capture it. The disk had been discarded, along with an old body, only to be replaced by something new. Something improved. More suited to what its master wanted.

He knew the boy must have changed it, because the new robot didn’t act anything like the old one did when Dark Riku tried to power it up. All it did was rampage against anything in sight. How many times did he have to change the program? How many little “glitches” did he have to iron out of it?

The light from the window dimmed, presumably from a cloud passing overhead. Dark Riku slowly lowered his arm and squinted hazily up at the ceiling.

He wondered. If it hurt. If the robot mourned for older versions of itself. He squeezed the disk lightly, wondering what the robot would do if it had this disk. Memories of fights from the old castle washed over his mind. There was one memory of the old replica that this one didn’t have, but he could imagine how it’d went. Being slain by his “real self”... Yeah. Why would the better version ever want a faulty copy of it around, anyway? His heart ached, imagining how much the other replica must have struggled. He could never imagine him fading away peacefully, he must have cursed the real Riku’s name to the bitter end.

This other robot… It was some kind of a “hero”. It wouldn’t want a more violent copy of itself running around. Would it hurt, fighting this other version of itself?

The room grew darker, still. The replica realized it wasn’t from clouds in the sky, but from the darkness of his own heart. It seeped out and swallowed up everything around him. Heartless could come popping out of it if he didn’t keep a watch on it. He rubbed the smooth plastic of the disk, and wondered about the other robot.

He had to make sure he did his job. He was supposed to turn this disk into a real heart. He stared out into the fog, imagining the sensation of hearts, of the darkness folding over the hardware in this chip, finding things that machines themselves normally couldn’t. It would make his job a lot easier if he could do this to that other robot from a distance. There was a light glimmer in the darkness. A heartless had brought him a heart that had yet to create its own form.

He would create one for it.

He willed the darkness to engulf it, compressing it into a tight shape. Its edges smoothed out to create a block, and he compressed some edges further until light from the heart could be seen pulsing through it.

He didn’t bother to give this thing a name. He was sure that once it was destroyed, it would form into a Shadow, Soldier, or some other standard heartless. He focused as best he could on the remaining darkness, creating more and more similar, but empty blocks to keep the main one safe, but also for greater mobility and to make it easier for the heart to collect data on the robot.

As the darkness formed into these shapes, light slowly started to fill the room again. Dark Riku groaned and rolled over, placing an arm over his face to block out the light.

“Right. You.” He grumbled to the heartless. “Destroy the Shadow that brought you here and get to work.”

As he heard a squeak of pain, he wondered why he bothered telling it to do that. A dull ache swam over his heart and he knew it was because of the damned neighbors. The blocks flew away, he knew they would focus on the area where they ran into the robot, but the Shadow would have just scurried about, attacking random people.

Why did it matter? It didn’t. This world would fall to the darkness either way. But somehow, knowing this only filled him with a great weight that he carried with him as his heavy body drifted to sleep.


End file.
